Chapter 17: Chopped Up and Fed to the Dogs

“Anything is fine, just a little will do.” Chao Xu touched her flat stomach, feeling she could probably eat seven or eight bowls without much trouble.

The butler nodded, his face beaming with a smile as he led Chao Xu into the living room. Yet, when his gaze brushed over Ci Mo, who was following behind Chao Xu, a subtle change flickered across his expression before he quickly composed himself. Throughout Chao Xu’s meal, his eyes would occasionally and almost imperceptibly rest upon Ci Mo, while he looked at Chao Xu, who was focused solely on eating, as if he wished to speak but held back.

Those matters were too grim—he wasn’t sure if it was right to tell the young lady at all.

After wrestling with his conscience for some time, the butler finally pulled Chao Xu aside into a quiet corner after her meal, his face serious. “Miss, do you know?”

“Know what?” Chao Xu looked completely bewildered.

The butler sighed. “That boy you brought back last night, I’ve already inquired about his origins. He was meant to be delivered to that bastard Gu Zhongming as… a plaything.”

When he went to punish Gu Zhongming yesterday, he had taken the opportunity to ask about the boy’s background.

Gu Zhongming, whose face had been pounded until he was dizzy and his ears rang, confessed everything out of fear of further violence. That beast had a taste for beautiful things and a depraved nature, indiscriminate of gender. One of his subordinates, eager to curry favor, somehow picked up the boy, saw his amnesia made him easy to trick, and planned to present him as a gift to gain favor.

But before the boy could be delivered, the young lady had intercepted and taken him away.

Even uttering the word “plaything” made the butler feel as if he was sullying the young lady’s ears.

Yet the truth remained: filth and darkness would always exist in this world. The sordid affairs of high society were too numerous to recount, but he hadn’t expected the young lady to encounter such a thing immediately upon her return.

By rights, after what she had gone through as a child, her mind had always been a little hazy; he ought not to trouble her with such matters. But seeing how fond she seemed of the boy, he couldn’t bear to stay silent, and so he decided to tell her.

Chao Xu, upon hearing this, showed no great emotional reaction as he had expected. She merely frowned in confusion. “What is a plaything?”

She had never heard the term; it was beyond her knowledge.

“Something terrible,” the butler replied. “If he really became one, that boy’s entire life would be ruined by Gu Zhongming.”

Indeed, if he were forced into that role, pressed beneath a man for such acts, it wouldn’t just shatter the boy’s mind and body; everyone who knew would look down on him with contempt.

If his misfortune were ever made public, it would be an irreparable scar for life.

Worse still, there were some who took pleasure in privately exchanging such playthings, and who knew how many had lost their lives to such games.

“So what you’re saying is, Gu Zhongming wanted to make Ci Mo into some kind of plaything and destroy him, is that it?” In the long silence that followed, Chao Xu suddenly looked up and spoke coldly.

The butler hadn’t quite grasped her meaning and simply nodded.

Chao Xu lowered her head in thought, then abruptly asked, “Butler, are there any knives in the kitchen?”

Still caught up in the previous question, the butler was a bit at a loss. “Miss, what do you need a knife for?”

He distinctly remembered that the young lady had never taken an interest in anything from the kitchen before.

“Oh, that.” Chao Xu narrowed her eyes, a murderous glint swirling in her pitch-black pupils. “I want to go chop up Gu Zhongming and feed him to the dogs.”